Likely a bluejay made the swoop
from roof eave to spruce bough,
and etched a lazy ‘u’ over the field beyond the window.
But the window pane, and the gazer,
are beclouded enough for this artist
of a January thaw to be recorded as a bluebird.
In memory, the scene is a blue balm.
– Dave Read
These dandelion lawns, that line
the lanes and streets that lead us
Into tempting towns & cities, where
stone holds sway all year long.
Dave Read
Molder of forsythia underfoot
signals the imminent breath
of lilac on a nearby bush.
It’s the pivot of Spring
in the Berkshires – a place
of pictures ever fading
into pictures ever fresh.
Dave Read
Come along William Culllen Bryant,
let us beckon Melville, Hawthorne to convene,
along with Umpachanee and Konkapot – all the best
Shall meet at Monument Mountain, and follow
Mohican Monument Trail, through the seasons
of the soul, to Peeskawso Peak, and there to rest.
Dave Read
Peeskawso is a Mohican word for “virtuous woman.”
What Lourdes, France is for global religious tourism, Monument Mountain is for devotees of American literature. A sudden cloudburst brought Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville shoulder to shoulder as they sought refuge under an outcropping en route to a very fancy picnic on the summit of Monument Mountain on August 5, 1850.
Same mountain, earlier poem:
This geologic oddment in the Berkshires,
our bald uncle, with busted nose, looms
where echo of the penultimate Mohican sounds,
unperturbed by pale poets, disturbers of myth,
who revere the Hawthorne-Melville rain delay.
Snug as it would fit in the hopper of majestic Mount Greylock,
for us with tastes prosaic, Monument Mountain is our pet rock.
– Dave Read
(Paean to an Eminence was published by Trustees of Reservations, 2008, Views of Monument Mountain.)
April is graded in the northeast by her work
toward the detonation of forsythia, which
converts neighborhood street corners and
Highway interstices into explosions of
sunshine for two weeks, max – and while that
shrub returns to ordinary and ungainly, a good
April hands the baton to May, who gets all the glory!
Dave Read
